A Year of Awesome - Week 3

I can't believe that Monday marked only the SECOND Monday of this school year! I feel like I've been back at it for months already! Continuing to focus on the positives, I'm back with another week of A Year of Awesome!

This was a week full of it... from International Dot Day to the annual Terry Fox Walk. Read on to hear about this week's highlights, then link up or share some of your own.

Today was International Dot Day! Inspired by Peter Reynolds' book, "The Dot", today was a day to challenge students around the world to consider the mark they'd make on the world this year. We kicked it off with an assembly during which a group of intermediate students (my former fifth graders!) read the story and presented a call to action to the rest of the student body. Every classroom was responsible for their own special activities. My students did some writing about their plans for the year, and we did some artwork inspired by THIS blog post. Students decorated coffee filters with washable markers, painted them with water (next time we'll spray them!), then we sprinkled each with coarse salt. Once dry, we attached them together and displayed them in the windows of the main school entrance. They look awesome hanging there in welcome! :)

Tuesday was great! I think it had to be our most productive day so far. (It was only Day 11, so that's not bad!) I've begun using Lucy Calkins Units of Study for my writing lessons, and today some of my boys who had barely written two lines up to now FILLED. HIS. PAGE! Such a hush fell over the classroom after my lesson and as they started to write that I was speechless for a moment. There were a few who had trouble getting started, of course, but the majority of my class got right to work. AWESOME!

The students played eight rounds grabbing a handful of manipulatives, estimating the number, and calculating the difference. The player with the lowest total of all eight rounds won the game! They had a ball.

You can grab a copy of this game for use in your own classroom by clicking any of the images above! It is a perfect activity for early finishers! :)

"The book order is here! The book order is here!" I'm still like a kid at Christmas when the book order arrives! There's nothing like a new book. I grabbed a whole pile of new picture books this month, including this cute one that I can't wait to use as a mentor text with my kids during writing! AWESOME!

Now on to the TRUE awesome moment of the day... As I mentioned on Tuesday, we started writing about "memorable moments" - those special little bits of our lives that we remember for whatever reason. One of the boys I had last year, who was a VERY reluctant writer, wrote about four sentences. By hand. Four beautiful, descriptive sentences that I was blown away to read today. I chose his memorable moment to read to the class as an example of using great details, and the effect was incredible. The class clapped for him, unprompted by me, and he was so pleased that those four sentences were extended by an entire page by the end of our writing block. Now THAT is truly AWESOME!!

I MUST go back to our writing block today... Our Day 3 schedule is a little mixed up because of a phys. ed. block. Today my students were working on writing when I called for their attention and asked them to finish up what they were writing and begin to tidy up to go to the gym. As I watched, only THREE students actually began packing up. THREE!! The others (including 10 boys) continued writing, or started to share with the rest of their table group what they had written. One of my boys even ended up on the verge of tears as one of the girls got a little bossy with him to clean up his things when he was frantically trying to continue writing. I was amazed by them. It was an AWESOME moment!!

Friday was a beautiful day! We gathered as a school on the back playground for our annual Terry Fox Walk to raise awareness and funds for cancer research. Last year, our little school of about 350 kids raised $1500! The totals haven't been tallied for this year's walk, but I'm sure it will be impressive, too! My little ones remarkably walked for a full hour without any whining or complaining. So awesome!

To end my week, as my students were leaving the classroom for their last-period French class, one of my girls made a fuss over giving a Heart Garden recognition. When she prefaced reading it with, "This one is a little out of the ordinary..." I knew she was up to something. ;) She presented it to ME for being "such a kind and fun teacher". I wish I'd taken a photo of it before I left for the weekend. How AWESOME!